A ruptured seaplane float lay on the ice. It was a mass of splinters. Forty yards farther on was the second. Then the ice bore a sprinkling of airplane fragments.
A section of a wing still poured off gruesome yellow smoke.
Gaping, sinister, an open lead in the ice yawned just beyond. Into this had plainly gone engine, fuselage, and the heavier parts of the plane.
To Doc's golden eyes, the whole sickening story was clearly 'written. Tracer bullets had fired the fuel tanks of the shabby seaplane. It had crashed in flames.
The odious green depths of the polar sea was the grave of whatever and whoever had been in the fuselage when the old crate cracked up.
Doc circled slowly.
The engine of his plane gurgled loudly. It coughed.
Then it stopped dead.
Chapter 13
ICE GHOSTS
THE FUEL had run out. Doc realized this and slammed the nose down.
Practically no height for maneuvering lay below. The little flivver, due to small wingspread and not inconsiderable weight, would glide about as well as a brickbat.
The only landing place was the lead which had swallowed the remains of the shabby seaplane flown by Doc's friends. And that had hardly the width of a city street. It was about half a block long.
Had Doc Savage's hand on the controls been a whit less masterful than it was, the rent in the arctic ice would have claimed his life. Nothing short of a miracle was the landing Doc made in the cramped space.
Above one end of the lead smaller than many a private swimming pool the plane abruptly turned broadside in the air. As swiftly, it turned to the other side. This fishtail maneuver lowered air speed to near the stalling point. With a sizable splash, the floats dug in the icy water. They plunged so deep the plane wetted its bottom.
Doc had known from the first he was due for a crack-up. He was not wrong. The plane sloughed for the wall of ice. Doc vaulted out of the cockpit
Only fractional seconds elapsed between the time the plane plumped into the water and the instant it smashed into the icy bank of the lead. It taxed even Doc's blinding speed to get out of the control bucket in time. He leaped. His feet landed on the ice. He slid a dozen yards as though on skates.
The plane hit. There was a jangling crash remindful of an armload of tin cans dumped on a concrete walk. Metal rent, crumpled. The plane sank like a monkey wrench.
By the time Doc had ceased sliding and wheeled back, the craft was gone. The repellent water boiled as in a hideous cauldron. Big bubbles climbed to the surface with ghastly glub-glubs. It was as though a living thing was drowning in the depths.
Doc Savage turned away. The valve from the submarine had gone down with the plane. So had the machine gun.
Doc stood on the menacing arctic ice pack armed only with his tremendous muscles and his keen brain. He had no food. He had no tent, no bedding, no boat to cross leads in the ice.
Probably no one could have understood more fully than Doc the meaning of this. He was in a region so rugged, so bleak, that out of countless expeditions traveling on the ice and equipped with the finest of dog teams and food, few escaped a dire fate.
Yet one beholding the quiet composure of the bronze man's features would have thought he didn't realize what he was up against. Doc's giant figure was striking, even swathed as it was in fur garments.
He roamed the vicinity of the wrecked planes for an hour. Nothing did he find to indicate his five friends still lived. So Doc went to meet Victor Vail.
VICTOR VAIL was above the average physically. In an ordinary group of men, he would have stood out as being rather athletic.
He had progressed a scant half mile from where Doc had sighted him from the plane. His breath sobbed through his teeth. He tottered, near exhaustion. He was indeed glad to see the bronze man.
Doc Savage had covered thrice the distance negotiated by Victor Vail. Yet Doc's bronze sinews were unstrained. He breathed normally. He might have been taking a stroll down Park Avenue.
"Your friends!" gasped Victor Vail. "Did you find them safe?"
Doc Savage shook a slow negative. "I found where their plane sank through a hole in the ice. That was all."
Victor Vail sagged down wearily, disconsolately.
"I heard the plane crash," he murmured. "I was making for the spot. I could not see the crash, because of the haze. But Keelhaul de Rosa's hired killers shot them down."
Doc made no sound. Victor Vail nipped his lips, then continued.
"Your five friends forced me to leave the plane by parachute to save my life," he murmured. "Others of the five could have escaped. Yet they chose to fight together, to the end. They were brave men."
Doc still made no sound. The moment was too pregnant with sorrow to be shattered by cold words.
"What do we do now?" Victor Vail queried at length.
"We'll find the lost liner Oceanic," Doc replied. "And we will find Keelhaul de Rosa."
The chill ferocity in the bronze giant's expressive voice made Victor Vail shiver. At that instant, he wouldn't have traded places with Keelhaul de Rosa for all the wealth in the world, with a safe return to New York City thrown in. Keelhaul de Rosa was going to feel the kind of justice this mighty bronze man dealt.
THEY SET a course for the uncharted land.
"What about Ben O'Gard?" questioned Victor Vail. "Do we still have him and his crew of devils to fight?"
"The Helldiver submerged with all aboard," Doc replied. "I had that valve off the tanks with me."
Victor Vail gestured as if tossing something away. "We're rid of them, then. Water will flood the submarine through the hole left by the missing valve."
A vast quaking and rumbling seized the ice pack. They became aware that a wind had sprung up. This gave signs of increasing to a gale. The ice was beginning to shift. It was as though they strode the white, heaving, crusted paunch of a great monster of cold.
A crevice opened unexpectedly. Victor Vail toppled on the brink. He slipped into space. But strong bronze fingers snatched him back.
The crevice closed as swiftly as it had opened. It made a ghastly crunching. Chunks of ice flew high in the air. The frozen monster might have been angry at being cheated of a victim, and was spitting its teeth out in a rage.
It was several minutes before Victor Vail could still the trembling of his knees.
"What a ghastly region!" he muttered.
"There must be a hard storm to the southward," Doc explained. "It is causing a movement of the ice field."
The going was incredibly rough. Sheer blocks of bergs jutted up everywhere. Many were as large as houses. Occasionally these toppled over. Sometimes they piled one atop the other after the fashion of cards shuffled together. These occurrences were without warning.
Twice more, Victor Vail was saved by his giant bronze companion.
"I shall never be able to pay my debt of gratitude to you," the violinist said feelingly.
Doc had a two-word reply to all such protestations.
"Forget it," he said.
As they neared land, the seemingly impossible happened the going became harder. The arctic ice pack was at its worst. Summer, such as it was, was in full swing. The sun had been shining steadily for two months. This had rotted the ice enough that it broke up under a brisk blow.
Doc now virtually carried Victor Vail. Time after time, ice pinnacles crashed upon the very spot where they stood. But in some magic manner, the mighty bronze man always managed to get himself and the violinist in the clear.
The air was filled with a cracking and rumbling so loud as to almost produce deafness. They might have been in the midst of a raging battle.
"You can tell your grandchildren you went through about the worst danger nature can offer," Doc said grimly. "For sheer, terrifying menace, nothing quite equals a storm with the arctic ice pack breaking up under foot."